(vg). “If you lead up to five kilometers from the finish and have the Hawaii qualification so close in front of your eyes, it is of course disappointing when you only finish second in your age group,” summed up Vincent Großer at the finish of the Ironman Tallinn . In fact, the 23-year-old had made a brilliant debut in the Ironman long distance of 3.8 km swimming, 180 km cycling and 42.2 km running and achieved a fantastic time of 9:03:13 hours.
The starting gun for the Ironman Tallinn 2020 was given exactly at 7:30 a.m. local time. Larger reached the shore of Lake Harku after a good 59:17 minutes, which meant the third fastest time in his age group 18-24 and around five minutes behind the toughest opponent for victory and qualification for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii next year .
Now it was a matter of increasing the first kilometers on the bike with approx. 230 watts and then increasing to the actually planned competition level of 260-270 watts in order to get a comfortable lead over the competition until the second transition area. With 4:35:40 hours for the 180 km, the Fernwalder managed this almost perfectly. With the fastest cycling time of the day and an hourly average of more than 39 km / h, Großer reached transition area two with a lead of 9:30 minutes over Karl Mell / Estonia.
In the final marathon, too, it was initially possible to stick to the competition plan. To start with a time of around 4:45 minutes per kilometer and then see what would be possible in the further course in order to complete the 42.2 km in a time just under 3:20 hours. In fact, up to kilometer 26 it looked as if the project should succeed, because Mell had only caught up about 3:30 minutes by then and Larger’s lead was still about six minutes.
But it turned out differently. While Vincent Großer could not increase his pace, Mell turned up again from km 30 and came with km times under 4:10 min. closer and closer. An additional drop in performance greater than at km 35 also played into the cards for the strong Estonian and he finally won the Ironman Tallin 2020 in the age group 18-24 in an outstanding total time of 8:58:08 hours, thus securing the only slot in this AK will be awarded for the World Championship in Hawaii in 2021.
Larger reached the goal after an also excellent 9:03:13 hours (59:11 swim, 4:35:40 bike, 3:22:55 run) and was able to console himself with the knowledge that he had made a sensational debut on the long distance and was there to have reached a time that would have been enough to win the 18-24 age classes at every Ironman in 2019 and thus to qualify for Hawaii.
Now it is time for Vincent Großer to take the positive aspects of the first long distance with him in order to qualify for Hawaii via Ironman Hamburg or Ironman Switzerland in 2021.
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